The hallway was warming up fast with bodies moving through it, the usual post-class shuffle of people checking phones and arguing about whether Nishimura's reading would actually show up on evaluations.
We were walking toward Tsukishima's class, the three of us, taking the long way because Belle's relationship with punctuality was more of a suggestion than a commitment.
The weapon building sat at the far end of Zone Two, past the theory towers and down the hill where the Arena complex started, and Belle had already eaten two thirds of her chips without offering a single one to either of us.
My brain was still chewing on Nishimura's lecture. Something about the part where he talked about fracture spaces being self-sustaining ecosystems, environments with internal logic, complete food chains and territorial boundaries and apex structures. The kind of thing you could dismiss as monster biology if you didn't sit with it.
I sat with it.
